Pupillometry as a measure of cognitive effort in patients with hearing
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Using Pupillometry to measure and compare Listening Effort in individuals with single sided deafness (SSD) who use bone conduction devices and individuals with Typical Hearing.
IRAS ID
303707
Contact name
Nishchay Mehta
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
UCLH/UCL Joint Research Office
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Understanding speech is an integral part of successful communication. Previous studies have suggested that people with hearing loss use greater effort to listen, especially in difficult listening environments. Increasing listening effort has been linked to greater fatigue and is a poorly captured component of this disability. Hearing devices have been linked to reports of reduced efforts in understanding speech for those with deafness. However, measuring the effort it takes to understand speech has been difficult and so has understanding of the exact benefits of hearing devices on reducing listening effort in those with hearing loss.
Recent studies have found that pupil sizes relate reliably with the difficulty of listening tasks in those with normal hearing, and therefore, may be a good measure of listening effort. However, it is unclear if it works as well in those with hearing loss, or indeed can distinguish changes in listening effort when hearing is improved.
Studying how pupil sizes change in those with single sided hearing loss will help us understand whether this test is reliable or not for patients with hearing loss. Patients with single sided deafness (normal hearing in the other ear), can hear well. However, their ability to understand speech in noisy environments is limited. Additionally, many patients with single sided deafness can be treated with hearing devices to restore hearing to both ears. This means that the effort of listening can be directly influenced by researchers either by increasing the difficulty of the listening task or changing the hearing disability.
In this study we plan to ask patients with single sided hearing loss to undertake a listening task. The task will become harder as they progress. The process will be undertaken once with and once without their hearing devices. During their listening task we will use a camera to measure their pupil diameters. The results will be compared to normal values we already have in a healthy hearing population.REC name
London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/PR/0816
Date of REC Opinion
25 Aug 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion